I have recently been told by a colleague, that a coworker of ours has accepted a position with a company, that is a direct-client of ours. The coworker knows they will be leaving after the holidays, but in an effort to reduce a last-minute blizzard of request for work, will only be giving the standard two-weeks notice.
Qualifiers: I am in Senior Management, but not over any aspect of his department.
I was told that he will probably try to poach other employees.
There is a Non-compete clause with our company, but since they aren’t technically a competitor, and those are hard to enforce, I don’t foresee this as an issue.
**My question(s): **Do I have a responsibility to share what I know with the company? should I notify the company?
Yuck. Crappy position to be in. As management, I would immediately try to work to make the person’s loss less painful for the company and protect against poaching. I would probably try to do this in a way that made it look like (even in retrospect) that I knew nothing. I do not think that I would notify the company unless there were severe extenuating circumstances. Nobody likes a snitch, not even senior management.
I had something like this last year. A very key person was very unhappy at being overworked and under appreciated. He was just too good at his job and was the only person that could really take the work on. Senior management really needed to bring in additional resources but seemed unwilling to do so even though if this person left, it would take two-mid to senior level people to replace him. When I heard he was looking (as a manager of a different group), I tried to take up some of the slack with my group and then pointedly asked senior management about overall morale and about the morale of the group he was in specifically. I said I had heard through the grapevine that the entire group was overworked and was close to burnout. I then specifically asked about him and how much he was working. I don’t think they took the hint even though I was pretty direct and this guy had worked 10 60 hour weeks in a row at this point. The Senior manager said that the team is happy, and we are busy but everyone is OK and doing well. I believe we will lose him at the end of the project this spring (he is pretty loyal and wants to close it out). Really a shame, the guy is a superstar.
I could have written this same paragraph. That is how similar my current situation is. I sat down with his Director and did the same “hey, I’m hearing stuff coming out of your group”, but he didn’t get the hint.
The problem is it is hearsay, you haven’t heard it from the person. I would still report it. This is one of the reasons, I hate notices. Unless a person is very important, the two or longer week notice, doesn’t do much.
I would tell management what I “overheard” so to speak and let them deal with it.